When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 39

The night was all a thing of blue and silver moonlight and sooty shadows, but under the muddy bulwark at the base of the overhanging sycamore the velvet denseness of impenetrable black prevailed.

Once Dog saw figures outlined on the bluff from which Bear Cat had fallen, and had to lie still for the seeming of hours, trusting to the favor of the shadow.

Eventually he succeeded in drawing the ma.s.s of flotsam sh.o.r.eward until he could wade in to the shallows, chancing the quicksands that were tricky there. Then he stumbled up the bank with his burden and deposited it between two bowlders where without daylight it would hardly be found. Dog was thinking fast, now.

He did not yet know whether he had saved a living man or retrieved a dead body, but his eagerness for investigation on that score must wait.

Now he must rejoin the chase and turn it away from such dangerous nearness to its quarry.

So Tate ran down the bank and shouted. Voices replied and figures became visible on the farther sh.o.r.e.

"I seed him fall in," came the mendacious a.s.surance of the man who was playing two parts. "I waded in atter him--but he went floatin' on down stream."

"Did he look like he mout be alive?" was the anxious query and the reply came as promptly. "He had every seemin' of bein' stone dead."

For a while they searched the banks, until, having discovered the hat, they decided to go back and let the final hunt for the body wait until morning.

But Dog had gone home and roused Joe Sanders, who had come in about midnight from another group of searchers, and the two of them had slipped back and recovered the limp burden--to find it still alive.

Between midnight and dawn they carried Bear Cat to the house of Bud Jason. The wound this time had glanced the skull, bringing unconsciousness but no fracture. The shock and the hours of lying wet in the freezing air had resulted in something like pneumonia, and for days Bear Cat had lain there in fever and delirium.

But the old miller had held grimly on despite the danger of discovery, and his woman had nursed with her rude knowledge of herbs, until the splendid reserve of strength, that had already been so prodigally taxed, proved itself still adequate. He had raved, they told him later, of shaking hands with someone whom he hated.

"Hev ye raided any more stills?" demanded Bear Cat when at last he had been able to talk, and Dog, who had been in every day, grinned:

"We 'lowed thet could wait a spell," he a.s.sured the crusader. "We had our hands right full es. .h.i.t war."

But the morning following Jerry Henderson's funeral, two more coils of copper were discovered aloft, and one of the men who had composed Kinnard's relay of messengers was liberated at daybreak after spending several tedious and unsatisfactory hours lashed to a dog-wood sapling.

If Kinnard Towers had raged before, now he fumed. Heretofore, it had been a condition of open war or one of acknowledged, even if precarious, peace. This was a mongrel situation which was neither the one nor the other, and every course was a dangerous one. The Stacys held their counsel, neither sanctioning the incorrigible black sheep of their flock in open declaration, nor yet totally relinquishing their right to avenge him, if an outside hand fell upon him. Meanwhile, the fiction of this young trouble-maker's charmed life was arousing the superst.i.tious to its acceptance as a sort of powerful fetish.

The very name Bear Cat was beginning to fall from the lips of tow-headed children, with open-mouthed awe, like a term of witchcraft, and this candid terror of children was, of course, only a reflection of the unconfessed, yet profound impression, stamped upon the minds of their elders.

"What ails everybody hyarabouts?" rumbled Kinnard over his evening pipe. "Heretofore when a man needed killin' he's been kilt--an' thet's all thar was ter hit. This young h.e.l.lion walks inter sure death traps an' walks out ergin. He falls over a clift inter a ragin' torrent--an'

slips through an army of men. In Satan's name, what air hit?"

Black Tom's rejoinder was not cheering: "Ef ye asks me, I think all these stories of witchcraft, backed up by his luck, hes cast a spell on folks. They thinks Bear Cat's in league with grave-yard spooks."

Kinnard knocked the ashes out of his pipe. His lips curled contemptuously. "An' es fer yoreself--does you take stock in thet d.a.m.n'

foolery, too?"

"I hain't talkin' erbout myself," retorted Tom sullenly. "Ye asked erbout what folks was cogitatin' an' I'm a-tellin' ye. If ye don't believe thar's a notion thet graves opens an' ther dead fights with him, jest go out an' talk ter these benighted hill-billies yoreself. If evidence air what ye wants, ye'll git a lavish of hit."

Those who were in Bear Cat's confidence const.i.tuted a close corporation, and they were not all, like Dog and Joe, men who mixed also with the enemy, gaining information while they railed against their own leader. There was talk of secret and mysterious meetings held at midnight by oath-bound men--to whom flowed a tide of recruits.

Kinnard believed these meetings to be a part of the general myth. His crude but effective secret service could gather no tangible evidence in support of their storied sessions.

One evening report drifted in to the Quarterhouse that some one had seen Bear Cat Stacy at a point not far distant, and that he had been boldly walking the open road--unaccompanied. Within the hour a party was out, supplied with jugs and bottles enough to keep the vengeful fires well fueled throughout the night. It was an evil-looking squad, and its appearance was in no wise deceptive. Its members, all save one, had begun their evening at the Quarterhouse bar. The one exception was George Kelly, a young man recently married, who had gone there to talk other business with Towers. George had an instinctive tendency toward straightforwardness, but he had also an infirmity of character which caused him to follow where a more aggressive nature led--and he had fallen under Kinnard's domination. His small tract of tillable land was mortgaged, and Kinnard held over him the lash of financial supremacy.

He could fight, but he could not argue, and when the unofficial posse was sent out that night, being in the place, he lacked the courage to refuse partic.i.p.ation.

They had found the footprints of the fugitive and had met two men who claimed to have seen him in the flesh, but Bear Cat himself had eluded them and near midnight they halted to rest. They threw themselves down in a small rock-walled basin which was broken at one point by a narrow gorge, through which they had come. It was a good place to revel in after labor because it was so shut-in that the bonfire they kindled could not be far seen. The jugs were opened and pa.s.sed around. It had set in to rain, and though they could endure that bodily discomfort while they had white liquor, their provident souls took thought against the rusting of their firearms. The guns were accordingly placed under a ledge of rock a few feet distant, all save one. Kelly lacking the buoyant courage of drunkenness, preferred to keep his weapon close at hand. He listened moodily and unresponsively to the obscene stories and ribald songs, which elicited thick peals of laughter from his companions. They had hunted hard, and now they were wa.s.sailing hard.

The long march home would sober them so they need not restrain their appet.i.tes.

Some impulse led Kelly to raise his eyes from the sordid picture in the red waver of the fire and glance toward the doorlike opening of the gorge. The eyes remained fixed--and somehow the rifle on his knees did not come up, as it should have done. A figure stood there silently, contemptuously looking on, and it was as gaunt and gray as that of a foraging wolf. It was as lean and sinewy, too, and out of the face glowed a pair of eyes dangerously narrow and glittering.

Then with a scornful laugh the figure stepped forward, bending lithely from the waist, with two steel-steady hands gripping two automatic pistols at its front.

"War you boys a-sarchin' fer me?" demanded Bear Cat and the trailing voices, that had been drunkenly essaying close harmony, broke off mid-verse. "Stay right whar ye're at, every mother's son of ye!" came the sharp injunction. "The man thet stirs air a dead man. This hain't no play-party thet I've done come ter."

They sat suddenly silent, abruptly surly and helpless; all save one.

George Kelly was still armed, and sitting somewhat apart. Beseechingly his companions sought by covert glance to signal him that he should avail himself of his armed advantage while they continued to distract the newcomer's attention.

Bear Cat's pistols broke out and two treasured jugs were shattered.

"Jim Towers," came the raspingly dictatorial order, "when ye goes back ter ther Quarterhouse ye kin tell Kinnard Towers thet Bear Cat Stacy hain't ter be captured by no litter of drunkards. Tell him he mout es well hire sober murderers or else quit."

As Towers sat glowering and silent, Stacy's voice continued in its stinging contempt.

"You d.a.m.ned murder hirelings, does ye think thet I'm ter be tuck prisoner by sneakin' weasels like you?"

George Kelly had sat silent. Now he rose to his feet, and Stacy ordered curtly, "Lay down thet gun, George. Ye're ther only man I'm astonished ter see hyar. I 'lowed ye war better then a hired a.s.sa.s.sin."

From someone came thick-tongued exhortation, "Git him, Kelly, you've got a gun. Git ther d.a.m.n' parson."

In the momentary centering of Bear Cat's attention upon George, some one slipped with a cat-like furtiveness of motion back into the thicker darkness--toward the cached rifles.

Then a strange thing happened.

George Kelly wheeled, ignoring the order to drop his weapon, but instead of pointing it at the lone invader he leveled it across the fire-lit circle.

"Stop thet!" he yelled. "Leave them rifle-guns be or I aims ter shoot."

Surprise was following on surprise, and the half-befuddled faces of the drinkers went blank with perplexity and incredulity.

"What ther h.e.l.l does ye mean? What did ye come out with us fer?"

demanded a shrill voice, and Kelly's response spat back at him viciously. "I means thet what Bear Cat says are true es text. I mean thet 'stid of seekin' ter kill him, I'm a-goin' along with him. I've done been a slave ter Kinnard Towers long enough--an' right now I aims ter quit."

"Sh.e.l.l we tell Kinnard thet?" demanded Jim Towers dryly.

"Tell him any d.a.m.n' thing ye likes. I'm through with him," and turning toward the astonished Stacy, he added, "I reckon we've done all we needs ter do hyar. We've busted thar bottles--an' thet's ter say we've busted thar hearts. Let's leave."

But Bear Cat's face was still grim and his words came with a clear-clipped sharpness. "Not yit.... They've still got some guns over thar.... I'll hold 'em where they're huddled, steady es a bird-dog. You git them guns."

George Kelly went circ.u.mspectly around the circ.u.mference of the fire and started back again, bearing an armful of rifles. At one point he had to pa.s.s so close to the dejectedly hulking shoulders of a seated figure that his knee brushed the coat--and at that instant the man swept out his hand and jerked violently at the pa.s.sing ankle.

Kelly did not go down, but he lunged stumblingly, and scattered weapons broke from his grasp. Even then he had the quickness of thought to throw them outward toward Bear Cat's feet and leaped side-wise himself, still clinging to one that had not fallen.

Taking advantage of the excitement Jim Towers sought to recover his feet--and almost succeeded. But with a readier agility Bear Cat leaped and his right hand, still gripping the pistol, swept outward in an arc.